The hurricane-like gust blinded Pat Milbery. He couldn’t see anything out the windshield of his Toyota.
Then he felt his tires slip off the pavement. He was crawling, maybe only 7 mph, but suddenly “both of my driver’s-side tires are off the road and I’m, like, teetering on the edge of the road,” said the pro snowboarder turned artist.
Milbery was not on a road built for teetering. U.S. 550 between Ouray and Silverton is the sketchiest stretch of pavement in Colorado. The canyon below the road is an abyss.
It was dark and blizzarding on Jan. 13 and Mibery was about to roll his rig into that canyon.
Cars that leave the so-called Million Dollar Highway often roll for hundreds of feet. Few people survive that.
Milbery knew all this. The Eagle River Valley native has driven the pass many times over the past few decades. As the truck tipped, he said, “my instinct as a snowboarder kicked in.” He knew he shouldn’t hesitate and fight to get the truck back on the road. That would likely roll the 2006 4Runner and once that started, his chance for survival would drop significantly.
“As if I was on a cliff or in an avalanche and that slide is about to take me down the slope,” he said. “I just decided to drop in. I jerk my wheels as hard as I can and … it literally drops me into about a 30-degree pitch. So I aired off the side of the road.”
After a blink in the air, he bounced into deep snow and started gaining speed. “Super fast,” he said. He smashed into trees. Glass shattered from all his side windows. The truck pinballed between trees and spun, heading toward a cliff. He was going faster.
“The snow is so deep, it comes up over my windshield. I cannot see a thing. I’m just like literally holding on for my life,” Milbery said in a rambling conversation that is the basis of a two-part Daily Sun-Up podcast episode recorded not long after the accident. “I get caught in … this little weird highway of trees and they’re almost like bowling pins. And they keep bouncing me back and forth. Boom, boom, they’re impacting the side of the car. I’m just like holding on. Finally, the snow comes off my windshield. I can see again. And I’m just like, oh God, I don’t even wanna see cause it seems like I’m in a Hollywood movie thriller or something like that. I still can’t believe I’m driving down off of a mountain and I just hold on. I tried pumping my brakes. They’re not really doing anything. I see like two big trees in front of me — probably a hundred feet away — and I’m like, all right just aim for these trees, dude, you need to stop this car.”
Milbery is one of those guys who fills your cup every time you see him. He gives long and strong hugs. He’s always ready for a good talk. He is a radiant fella, which is reflected in his art. He paints vibrant murals across the state that fill streetscapes with bursts of color. He was on his way that Saturday night to Silverton with a giant painting he was giving to his favorite charity, the Snowboard Outreach Society.
“I’m extremely, extremely thankful to be here right now,” he said after his narrow escape on Red Mountain Pass. “And I probably should not be here right now.”
The Colorado Sun asked the Colorado State Patrol for its reports from U.S. 550. State troopers investigated 143 car accidents on U.S. 550 from 2013 through 2023. Eight of those accidents resulted in fatalities and 38 involved injuries. All of those fatal and injury accidents were on a 14-mile stretch of the highway between mile markers 78 and 92.
Milbery left the road at mile marker 82.
The fatal accident reports are horrifying. In May 2013, a car that left the road at mile marker 79 spent 51 feet in the air. In April 2015, a fatal crash at mile marker 89 was not discovered for six days. In November 2015, troopers measured a car traveling 202 feet in the air after slipping off the pavement at mile marker 89. A car rolled for 458 feet at mile marker 90 in December 2018. All the fatal accident reports show cars rolling down the canyon.
Milbery gleans a lot of lessons from his life. He’s constantly adjusting as he navigates, making sure he is absorbing all the messages that surround us on every step of our journey.
He pursues “situations that develop and force you to become so much of a greater person than yourself, than you thought you could ever be, and it really elevates you to achieving new things and becoming a better version of yourself.”
The drivers who saw his lights way down in the canyon and stopped and screamed “Are you alive?” The state trooper and ambulance crew that checked him out. The lady in the Rivian — the only vehicle that passed him heading to Silverton — who picked him up after he hiked up to the road and brought him and all his stuff to Silverton in the blizzard so he could deliver for the Snowboard Outreach Society. These are “angelic alignments,” he said.
The ordeal on Red Mountain Pass is a big life lesson for Milbery. He’s got plans to tap that experience to make his light shine even brighter.
“It’s important to be hyperaware of life’s lessons. Life doesn’t happen to us. It happens for us,” he said. “So when you alter your perspective and shape your every day with gratitude and recognize how lucky we are to live in this state and do stuff we love to do, we celebrate our existence more than just accept it.”
